


small mill of silence

by surexit



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-08
Updated: 2011-10-08
Packaged: 2017-10-24 10:11:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/262301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surexit/pseuds/surexit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes they need a moment or two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	small mill of silence

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Мгновенья тишины](https://archiveofourown.org/works/736681) by [SleepSpindles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepSpindles/pseuds/SleepSpindles)



Most of the time, it isn’t that difficult. They started as friends and they’ll finish as friends; the sexy touching is a bonus. A bonus which Ray misses like fuck, sure, but it’s only a small part of what goes on between him and Brad, an addition of a bit of sticky, sticky man-glue to something already strong enough to keep out the world, keep the bullshit at bay.

So it’s not that difficult to cut it out. It’s not like Brad stops looking at him or listening to him or joining in when he sings. It’s just one more thing, like showers, like regular meals, like flushing toilets, which is as essential as air in the civilian world and completely abandoned on deployment.

Of course, there aren’t regular reminders of showers or regular meals or flushing toilets around him. Showers don’t walk up behind him and grab his binoculars from him with only an inch of space between them. Toilets don’t wantonly take their shirts off. Regular meals don’t lie there, listening with their whole bodies while he has a combat jack.

Ray feels like he might have lost the point of that metaphor. What-the-fuck-ever, the main thing is, it’s normally not that difficult. But right now? Right now, when Rudy’s just fucking punched him in the face and there’s no more Ripped Fuel and he feels like the words he’s been letting spill out for days are jammed up painfully behind his eyes, so that he has to press the heels of his hands _hard_ to his eyesockets to keep them back, right now it is the worst fucking thing that Brad won’t touch him. Can’t touch him. Whatever.

So he goes to find a radio to hide behind.

Brad finds him twenty minutes later, not like it’s fucking difficult in this gossiping shithole, and sets his gun down and says, “Need me to hold anything?”

There are a couple of inappropriate answers to that question, but they’re both too raw right now, so Ray just shakes his head. The words are still gummed up, anyway.

Brad sit down, leaning against a lopsided piece of building remnant. He looks really good out of Ray’s peripheral vision, legs going on for miles, loose posture and huge hands resting on his thighs. Ray doesn’t want to take in any more details, doesn’t want to look at him head-on, because right now would be a bad time. He focuses very carefully on the piece of wire he’s trying to unsnarl, and tries not to see anything else.

“Home soon,” Brad says after a while. Ray grunts, and Brad carries on, in the same casual, level tone of voice, “And as soon as I can, I’m going to suck your cock until you see stars.”

The words hit Ray like a physical jolt, unexpected water flung onto a dry patch of earth, and his hands pause, brain frozen. They never... they never tread that line. When they’re on deployment they don’t refer to anything like that in word or deed, because it’s fucking difficult to stop once they start.

Actually, that’s a lie. _Ray_ sometimes treads that line. But Brad is a compartmentalising _bastard_ , and rarely even gives an indication that he’s aware the line is there. So this is unusual, downright unprecedented even.

But then, this whole fucking shoddy invasion has been unprecedented, and Ray should probably stop expecting things to go as expected.

“Won’t fix shit, homes,” he manages, staring at his hands, his words dragging over a throat gone dry, and Brad says, the edge of his mouth crooked up slightly, “It’s going to be fucking spectacular, though.” Ray lifts his gaze and finds that Brad hasn’t moved, everything about him relaxed and unconcerned but for his pale eyes fixed, intent on Ray’s face.

There’s a pause that seems to go on forever to Ray, transfixed as he is, before Brad says, “Screwdriver, Corporal?” and holds it out. Ray doesn’t need a screwdriver, but he reaches to take it anyway, and their fingers brush, a touch of skin which is miles away from what Ray wants (if he’s honest, he wants a hug and _then_ a blowjob, but Brad will never hear that from him) but it’ll do.

Marines make do.

***

It’s never as easy as it should be. It’s not like Ray’s not right there all the time anyway, keeping Brad steady, so it shouldn’t matter so much that Brad can look but can’t touch, and he can’t even look that often. It should take barely any conscious thought to stop himself from reaching out and pressing his finger into the dimple in Ray’s cheek, tracing around his eyes. Instead, it takes concentration to talk himself down, to force himself to look away, and each time he has to pull himself together is just as difficult as the last.

The struggle is most acute when Ray’s like this, quiet and twisted in around himself. Brad’s seen him do this a dozen times, come down from the fuckery and the adrenaline and the sleep deprivation, and he’s never reached a place where he can watch it happen with detachment.

This time’s particularly bad, like everything in this fucking country. When he tracks Ray down, hiding in a half-ruined building and fixing a broken radio, he does a quick and thorough sweep of the surrounding area before he announces himself. He never normally bothers.

Around the other side of the mostly-demolished wall, Ray’s stabbing at the innards of a radio with less than his usual precision, face drawn tight and grim. “Need me to hold anything?” Brad asks, not really expecting an answer. He gives Ray half a second, in case words will magically free themselves from the thin line of his lips, and then sits down and allows himself forty-five seconds of appreciating the way Ray Person looks when he’s tight and focused and angry.

It’s a nice forty-five seconds.

Finally, he stirs. “Home soon,” he offers Ray, and then adds, because it’s true and he _wants_ , “And as soon as I can, I’m going to suck your cock until you see stars.”

Ray twitches like the words are a tangible touch, and raises his wide eyes to meet Brad’s after half a second. “Won’t fix shit, homes,” he says, voice rougher than usual, and he’s present behind his eyes in a ways he hasn’t been since Baghdad.

Brad feels himself smiling, the tiny quirk of his mouth that Ray Person seems to draw out of him like magic. “It’s going to be fucking spectacular, though.” If he dwells for too long on the slight part of Ray’s lips, the darkness of his eyes, he’s going to start fucking _proving_ that assertion, so instead he lays his hand on the first tool he can and offers it to Ray. “Screwdriver, Corporal?” Ray probably doesn’t need it, but he stretches to take it, and Brad feels his smile widen, just a touch. It’s never as easy as it should be, but he’s okay with it anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my tiny hello to the GK fandom. HELLO. Looleebelle is my *favourite* for a lovely couple of hours fixing this, thank you.


End file.
